


Too Much Cologne

by orphan_account



Series: Patater Parents [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Irina Mashkov, Kent is THAT dad, Loose Teeth, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Patater Parents, tooth fairy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8613901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It's always up to Alexei, because this is the part Kent thinks is way too gross.  And what's worse, their kid is growing up way too fast.





	

**Author's Note:**

> These are basically inspired by my nine year old--and self-indulgent Patater Parent fics. Warnings for this fic, tooth pulling (the parent kind, not the dentist kind)

“Babe.” The smile Kent gives Alexei is telling, and Alexei lets out a tiny breath before Kent speaks again. “So uh...”

“What is problem?” Alexei has his feet up on the coffee table. They’d spent three hours cleaning, and another two running errands, and it’s the first time they’ve been able to properly sit all day. Tater had been looking forward to putting on Netflix and just not thinking for a few hours. But now Kent is looking at him like that and...

“Irina’s in her room crying.”

Tater feels a tendon in his shoulder reflexively tighten. “Why?” He knows Kent didn’t make her cry because Kent has only made her cry a few times unintentionally because yeah, he’s that dad. “Tell me is not from fish. We bury so many days ago.”

Kent shakes his head and wrinkles his nose and damn but it’s been years and Alexei still finds that expression hard to resist. “Her tooth hurts.”

“She has cavity?” He sits forward preparing to have Kent make the emergency call to the dentist.

“No uh. It’s. Loose.”

Tater sinks back into the cushions and reaches for his bottle of beer which is waiting for him. “Your turn.”

“Babe,” Kent wheedles as he sinks down next to Alexei and puts on his best pout. “You know I can’t...it’s gross it’s...I can’t do it. And last time I tried it was a fucking disaster and you ended up having to take over anyway. She likes it best when you do it. You’re so good at it, she barely even bleeds.”

This wouldn’t be a problem if their daughter would just let her teeth get wriggly and fall out when she bites into an apple or something. But Irina can’t stand the feeling of a wiggly tooth and Tater has been the Tooth Guy since her first front bottom tooth came out with the Magic Tissue--some stupid thing her teacher invented and they were forced to carry on at home after she moved into the next grade.

He knows at this point there’s really no getting out of it. Kent is good at a lot of things with Irina. She’s practically his shadow, and he’s taught her everything from bike riding to skating to painting her nails and colour-co-ordinating all of her outfits.

But he really and truly is a disaster at the whole teeth thing. The last time had been a bloody disaster, literally, and he vowed never to touch it again. But damn it Tater just really wants to rest and...

“Papaaaaaaa.” 

Her small voice rings out and Tater knows that at least twenty minutes of his relaxing afternoon is about to be wasted. He puts his beer down and stands up, Kent close at his heels.

“I’ll like...hold her hand,” he says and ignores Alexei’s eyeroll as they ascend the stairs.

Irina’s room is the most random mixture of things. She’s got Avengers next to a poster of my little ponies, next to one of emojis, next to a doll house. Her desk is a mess of potted flowers and succulents, her bed barely visible under her giant stuffed unicorn and oversized shark she refuses to sleep without. Somewhere beneath it all is a ghostbusters duvet Kent had to special order and had Tater--even with their absurd NHL salaries--cringing at the cost.

Irina was sat on her little rug in the centre of the room with her Finn and Thor dolls crammed into a Barbie car way too small for them. She looked up when her dads entered, and put on her most pathetic mile.

“Papen’ka,” she says in a voice he knows she learnt from Kent, “my tooth hurts.” She grimaces at him and he can see one of her bottom teeth sticking out further than it should be.

With a sigh and a glance back at Kent who hadn’t quite ventured into the bedroom, he kneels next to her. “Okay solnyshko, let me see tooth,” he says to her. He takes her chin between his fingers, and with the other hand, prods at the tooth. She grimaces and pulls back, and he sighs because it’s not really ready to come out but he knows that just like her daddy, she’s going to be relentless about it until it’s out. Like she has with every. other. one.

“Can you pull it?”

“I can, but is going to hurt.”

She sighs, then looks up at Kent. “Daddy, can I sit in your lap?”

Kent all-but leaps toward her, and Tater rises to get the damn, stupid Magic Tissue from the bathroom, and takes a minute to use a few choice curse words--in his head of course--then comes back into find her safely tucked against Kent’s chest.

She gives Tater a brave face--one she wouldn’t need if she wasn’t so damn much like Kent that she could just let things go, but in a way it’s why Alexei fell in love with Kent, and in a way it’s exactly how he imagined their daughter.  
And the thought makes him smile as he crouches in front of her and takes her by the chin again, and begins to work the tooth.

For what it’s worth, the process is as disgusting as ever. Kent is wincing and making noises and she’s whimpering but steadfastly forcing the issue, and eventually he feels it give, and then release.

She bleeds--not nearly as bad as Kent’s disastrous try months ago, and she looks ridiculously cute with a bit of tissue poking out from between her lips.  
“I guess the tooth fairy is coming tonight,” Kent says, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her arm.

She turns her head, blinking at him with her large, dark, doe eyes, and carefully pulls the tissue from her mouth. There’s a tiny hole--no real difference between that and when Kent or Alexei has taken a puck or a stick to the mouth, really-- and she says in the softest, sweetest voice, “Daddy, since I know the tooth fairy isn’t real, can you just give me the money now and I’ll tell all the kids who still believe that she visited me last night or whatever?”

Kent blinks at her. “Are you serious?”

“What?” she says, blinking at him.

“How long have you known?”

Irina looks back at Alexei and they share a secret smile before she turns back to Kent. She pats him on the shoulder as if to console him for all the years he’s wasted pretending to be a damn fairy and exchanging teeth for money and says, “That’s not really important, is it? What’s important is the memories.”

Kent gapes at her, then lifts her off his lap and stands. “That’s it. You’re not allowed online anymore. And those books,” he points to her massive row of novels, “gone. Forever. It’s Dahl and Seuss for you from now on until like...forever.”

He storms out and she turns to Alexei. “He’s joking, right?”

Tater sighs and pulls her in for a hug, kissing her cheek. “He want you to stay little girl. He forgets in five minutes.”

She eyes her laptop and books which remain safely in their spaces, and Alexei is damn sure Irina knows Kent wouldn’t be able to do a single thing to make her unhappy anyway. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, papa.” She tongues the hole in her gum. “Feels better.”

Alexei leans in, then peppers her cheeks with kisses until she’s breathless with laughter and in his arms. “Good. You want tooth?”

“Do I still get money?” she asks with a wide grin.

He winks. “You help with dishes, I give money. Maybe ice cream after school.”

“Okay!” she says, then slips past him to go back to her dolls.

He watches for a minute, then eases himself out of the room, and back down the stairs to find Kent on the sofa looking put out and a little hurt. Alexei’s heart twists for him because while he doesn’t really mind as much that their baby is growing up so fast, Kent’s taking it a little hard.

He slides up behind Kent, wrapping his arms round his husband’s waist, and pushes his face into the crook of Kent’s neck. “She still your little baby.”

“Yeah, who doesn’t believe in the tooth fairy and is exploiting your tooth-pulling skills for cash. It’s a racket.”

Alexei laughs into the warm skin of Kent’s neck, then shakes his head. “She’s little girl, not baby. But she want to make you happy still.” He uncurls his palm to display the tooth, and he laughs hard when Kent recoils and throws himself away from Tater.

“Oh my god you are so gross!”

Tater puts the tooth on the table and is suddenly struck by the fact that she’s only got a couple more left to go before they never get to do this again. And as annoying as the process is, it gives him a better understanding of why Kent feel so sad all of a sudden.

Kent seems to read the expression on his face, because he comes readily, willingly, and cups Alexei’s cheeks, kissing him gentle and soft over his lips, and one pecked against the end of his nose.  
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Alexei nods, letting out a tiny sigh. “Is not best feeling. She soon go to high school. Maybe drive car, then college. We maybe not see her at all.”

“I really don’t think we’re gonna have that problem,” Kent says, because it’s true. He’s fairly sure of any kid to ever exist, Irina isn’t going to stay far away from her doting fathers. “But yeah, it’s bittersweet.”

Alexei draws Kent to him, until Kent’s lying between the V of his legs, and their fingers are twisted together. Alexei’s beer and show is forgotten, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s been years and years and he still gets to have this, and that means everything.

“I guess it’s a good thing we’re Jewish,” Kent says after a little while.

Alexei lifts a brow. “What you mean?”

“Well,” Kent says slowly, “we don’t have to deal with the trauma of Santa or the Easter Bunny.”

Alexei laughs. “Is true. Only tooth fairy.”

Kent hums, then says, “How’d she find out, anyway? I bet it was some little a-hole at school.”

Alexei thinks back to a morning three years before when she catches Tater throwing the tooth into the garbage. The then six-year-old stared at him, hand cocked up on her fist, head tilted to the side. “It was daddy, wasn’t it?”

Tater spluttered but only for a moment before he said, “How you find out?”

She rolled her eyes in a way only a snarky little six year old can do and said , “He wears way too much cologne. I was pretty sure it was him last month.”

Tater sighed and drew her in for a hug. “But you not tell. He like playing fairy way too much. Just our little secret?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

Alexei looks down at Kent with a tiny grin to himself, then kisses his temple. “Yeah, is terrible child at school, I’m sure. But it happen now, and is over.”

“I love you,” Kent says from behind a sigh.

Alexei grins and squeezes him a little tighter. “I love you too.”


End file.
